Stijn Bastianen

Stijn Bastianen (1987) works and lives in Aarschot, Belgium.

“I am a comedian on canvas. I have always wanted to entertain everybody for as long as I can remember by making people around me laugh at jokes or by doing stupid senseless things. I feel the same towards painting. It’s kind of a similar way of expressing myself. I want my paintings to make people smile, wonder, think and fantasize. For me painting is perfect, it has no end. It’s like an unachievable goal because there is no such thing as a perfect painting. That’s what I love about it, it is honestly difficult to make a good painting and I believe that this is how it should always be. 

As a kid I used to read a lot of comics and watch cartoons. In the past couple of years this began to appear more and more in my work. I think it has to do with the nostalgic aspect of it. Starting with cartoonish elements and figures this evolved further into the desire to tell a story in multiple frames. I use my sketchbooks to draw what you could call ‘small storyboards’ in the shape of a canvas. After more than a decade of drawing I have a whole archive of these sketchbooks that I use while painting. 

In my larger paintings, I fantasize about weird or absurd situations as a painter to be in. From there on I slowly add details and focus points to direct the viewer’s eye. It is important for me that the viewer gets sucked in from a distance and discover new things while exploring. Because large paintings demand a lot of focus, I like to switch to smaller works and break the pace. Switching between different rhythms helps me to keep a clear fresh vision on what I am doing.”